Petaloso, the new word created by a child that comes to the dictionary

Petaloso is the new word created by an eight-year-old Italian boy who has traveled around the world thanks to social networks. The hashtag #petaloso has been used more than 50,000 times and even the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has pronounced petaloso in public, in support of the linguistic creation of this little boy.

And it is the creativity of children has no limits and this has been demonstrated a few weeks ago in Marchesi de Copparo, a municipality of about 16,000 inhabitants in the province of Ferrara, in northern Italy. That day in the language class of the course equivalent to third grade of Primary played an exam on adjectives.

Professor Margherita Aurora was intrigued when one of her students, Matteo, used an unknown word in a written work: "petaloso". Matteo applied the adjective petaloso ("full of petals") to a flower, already in Italian fiore is masculine. The word does not officially exist in the Italian dictionary, but grammatically it makes sense as a combination of "petal" and the suffix "-oso" ("full of").


As the teacher explains, which for more coincidence is called Margherita, "I marked 'petaloso' as a mistake, but I added a red circle to indicate that it was a beautiful mistake, I liked the word, and that's why I thought to ask opinion of the Crusca. " The Accademia della Crusca is the national institute for the safeguarding of Italian, an institution that can be compared with the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.

Margherita invited Matteo to write to the Crusca Academy to ask for his opinion. To the surprise of both, both the teacher and the student received an encouraging response.

"The word you invented is well formed and could be used in the Italian language," wrote Maria Cristina Torchia, linguist counselor at Crusca. "It's beautiful and clear," he added.


However, the linguist clarified that for a word to be officially part of the Italian language, a large number of people must use it and understand its meaning.

"If you manage to spread your voice among many people so that they begin to say 'What a petal this flower is!', Then it will have become a word in Italian."

This is worth more than a thousand Italian classes, "he wrote in his Facebook account on Monday and shared photos of the letter he received.

Without realizing it, a movement was unleashed to do exactly what Crusca had asked for: to make "petaloso" a word widely known and used.

Your original Facebook message has been shared more than 80,000 times. On Twitter, #petaloso was used about 40,000 times. The word quickly became a trend in Italy and this Wednesday even became present in the list of global trends.


Many Twitter users used the word in context, which shows its widespread use and its meaning was commonly understood.

Crusca itself - an institution created in 1583 - joined the effort on the internet and retweeted messages with the use of the word.

The Zanichelli publishing house - which publishes one of the most widely referenced editions of Italian dictionaries - said it would include the word in its next edition.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi even congratulated the young student.

"Petaloso" began its journey to become an official Italian word thanks to the imagination of an eight year old boy, and the power of social media.

Video: Petaloso coffee for three #24


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